Where Feminism Has Gone Wrong

Insofar as I am any kind of -ist, I am a feminist.

I'm all for equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work. I'm all for a woman as president if she is the best candidate. I believe we need more women in professional positions of power, more women in fields that are still dominated by men.

I believe that if a woman is sexually harassed or abused, she should be able to complain without stigma and that her claim should be investigated, and the man, if guilty, should be punished. 

I believe in these and many other goals of feminism.

But there is a growing number of feminists who insist that women and men are basically the same and most differences are only "perceived" and the result of "social conditioning."  Increasingly these deniers of difference dominate popular feminism. We hear the voice of feminists who acknowledge difference only rarely, if at all.

This is where feminism has gone wrong.

Pretending that women and men feel the same about sex does not create equality. On the contrary, it promotes inequality.

By denying difference, we deny the many imbalances of power that difference creates between women and men.  We deprive ourselves of the open-mindedness necessary to assess these powers, determine what they mean, and point out when they are being abused.

In short, by denying difference, we blind ourselves to many, even most, of the real problems of inequality between women and men. 

It's not hard to see why feminism had taken this wrong turn. Denying difference is increasingly popular, and even obligatory (the subject of a future post). It is easier to go with the masses than oppose them, and feminism has taken the easy route. 

More importantly, as I discuss in my last post, accepting difference is what makes the goal of equality so difficult. If women and men were really the same, working towards equality would the straightforward matter feminism increasingly portrays it to be. The issue of sexual harassment and abuse in particular would be easier to deal with.  In the end, taking the easy way out will create far more problems than it solves, for women and men both.